Ancient Petra

This is the famous entrance to the ruins of Petra, the 2nd century B.C. capital city of the Nabataean Kingdom in Jordan. I photographed this in 1997 with film; HDR hadn't been conceived of at this point. I tried to open the shadows using Adobe Camera Raw in an attempt to mitigate the contrast and the loss of detail, and I was only partially successful. With film, when detail was lost in either the shadows or the highlights, it was done forever. When we all shot film, you had to 'expose for the highlights and let the shadows go dark.' That was better than having overexposed highlights. We had no choice, really, without extensive and complicated darkroom manipulation after-the-fact. Today, it would be so easy to retain detail throughout this composition with HDR. Still, the deep shadows and moody tones in the rocks add a unique drama to this ancient place. My settings were unrecorded, but I know I used Fujichrome Velvia 50 and f/32 plus a tripod. The shutter speed was probably around 1/2 second.